


A Scene from Stupid Saturday

by Deifire



Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Bodyswap, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 04:00:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13356048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: When Janet woke up, she wasn't herself.





	A Scene from Stupid Saturday

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Eerie, Indiana community's Fandom Tropes Challenge: Bodyswap.

When she finally got to her house after what felt like hours of walking, Janet's heart leapt in her chest. The Donner's car wasn't in the driveway, which meant her parents weren't home. 

Maybe they were out looking for her. Maybe he had done something to them. Maybe he was even now alone in the house with her little sister.

She cursed Dash once again as she let herself in using the spare key hidden under the porcelain wolpertinger. Dash and Eerie itself and even Marshall, who she loved, but who had only increased the level of weirdness in her life since she'd let him into it.

And this? She fumed as she stomped up the stairs. This was by far the weirdest and worst thing that had happened to her in the over a year since she'd come back from the Lost Hour.

When she flung open the door to her room, she wasn't exactly surprised to find herself standing behind it, arms folded and lips curled into a sneer that was familiar, but not because she was used to seeing it in the mirror.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up," the other Janet said.

"You!" Janet tried not to wince at the sound she made, angry and still not used to pitching Dash's voice. She grabbed…herself by the shirt front and glared up into her own face. Holy corn. She hadn't realized until now just how much taller she was than Dash. Had he always been this short? She filed the information away for later when got her own body back and continued. "How did you get into my body?! Where are my mom and dad? Where's my sister?"

"I don't know!" The other Janet—Dash, in Janet's rightful body—twisted out of her grip. "I could ask you the same question! And your parents took your sister to the mall."

Janet almost sighed in relief. Then another thought occurred to her. "Why am I—I mean, why are you still here? Am I grounded? What did you do?"

"Relax!" Dash held up his…her…Janet's body's hands. "I told them I was sick, okay? It got me out of breakfast with the family and it got me left here. If they ask, 'you' spent the morning puking your guts out."

"Oh." That was actually good thinking for somebody who wasn't used to making excuses to parents.

"I was about to head over to Teller's when you got here," Dash continued. "I couldn't get him on the phone, but that probably just means he's up in the attic."

"Good," Janet said. "If anybody will know how to fix this, he—" She broke off as another horrible realization hit her. "You're _dressed_."

Janet had woken up in the clothes she was still wearing and hadn't disrobed Dash's body any more than she'd needed to in the meantime. 

Dash, on the other hand, was no longer clad in the pajamas Janet had worn to bed. Instead, he was wearing the only black t-shirt she owned and the only pair of black jeans. They were clothes Janet had been meaning to donate or pass down to her sister. They'd fit fine when her mother bought them a year ago, but these days, the shirt was tight and the jeans were a bit too short and gave her difficultly when she tried to pull them past her hips. She could only hope the little weasel had chosen them because of the color scheme and not because of the way they showed off certain results of Janet's recent, embarrassing growth spurt. 

No matter what, though, he'd seen her naked. Worse, he'd _been_ her naked. 

"What?" Dash said as she glared at him. "What did you want want me to do? Go over to your boyfriend's in the pink fluffy yeti pajamas? Without even wearing one of these?" He reached inside a shirt sleeve and pulled out a beige bra strap. "Why are these things so hard to figure out, by the way?"

"Oh my god!" Janet shrugged out of Dash's smelly coat and collapsed across her own bed, burying her face in a pillow. "You went into my underwear drawer? I cannot believe you!"

"Fine," Dash said. "You win. Next time, no underwear."

"No!" That was absolutely _not_ the lesson he was supposed to learn here. "What is wrong with you? And stop touching any part of my body!"

"Yeah, that's gonna be difficult." Dash sneered. "Look, don't flatter yourself thinking that I woke up this morning _wanting_ to be you. I want my body back and whole this stupid thing over with just as much as you do." He bent down and picked his coat off the floor. "This is mine. I haven't thrown any of your stuff on the ground for no reason."

"Sorry," Janet grumbled. She watched him shrug into it, then looked around her room. The possessions she could see did seem to be where she'd left them, but she wondered what she was going to find missing when she had the chance to search carefully. 

The coat on Dash was sort of an improvement. The long layer of fabric hid…things. 

Janet was going to need more protection from the elements on her way to Marshall's, though. She stalked over to her closet and grabbed her puffy white winter coat from where it hung on the door, then considered taking more of her clothes. She wasn't sure how well they would fit Dash's body, but they would at least be freshly laundered. No, she decided. She wasn't intending to stay Dash long enough for it to matter. 

"Marshall will know what to do," she said, both to him and to herself. "He'll figure out what's happened and get us back in the right bodies."

"Right."

"And I can go back to my own life in my own house with my own family and my own boyfriend, and you can…um…I mean…"

It was the wrong thing to say, Janet realized a split second too late. Worse, she'd stumbled and called attention to it.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't mean…I mean, I didn't think…"

From Dash's silence and the icy expression, apologizing made it even worse still.

Janet looked a little scary when she was upset, she realized. And a little like her mom. She filed that information away for later, too. 

She wanted to tell Dash she knew how he felt, but she didn't really. Not even after literally walking a mile in his boots. Even when Janet had been alone in the Lost Hour, she'd had the run of Eerie and plenty of warm, empty places to sleep once she'd figured out how to elude the garbage men. Dash had the run of a drafty, bat-infested old mill. She'd had friends, even back then: Mr. Hoffa and later Marshall and that weird old milkman who'd shown them how to get home. Dash had no one, unless you counted Simon, who was nice to everybody, and Marshall, who sometimes put up with him for reasons of his own. And she'd always, even this morning, known who she was and where she'd come from.

She was saved by the sound of a knock, then the creak of the front door opening.

"Janet?" came the sound of an all-too-familiar voice.

"Marshall," Janet whispered.

"Up here!" Dash called.

They listened as Marshall took the stairs two at a time.

"Janet, we've got a problem—" Marshall began as soon as he burst into the room. He was wearing the new green coat he'd gotten for Christmas and his hair was tied back in the usual ponytail he sported these days.

"Marshall!" Dash said, suddenly no longer just inhabiting Janet's body, but doing a full-on Janet impersonation. "Thank god you're here! Dash broke into my room and he—"

"He's not me!" Janet shouted.

But Marshall didn't fall for whatever scam Dash was hoping to pull. Instead, he stepped away from Dash, then followed his gaze to where Janet was standing by the closet.

He turned back to Dash, then back to Janet, then back to Dash, then back to Janet again.

"Janet?" Marshall asked her. "That is you, right?"

He knew her. Even when she was in the wrong body, he knew her. Janet grinned and tried not to sound smug. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, Mars, it's me."

"Oh man." He turned back to Dash in Janet's body. "Dash?" he asked, sounding vaguely disappointed in him.

"Yeah," said Dash. "Fine. You got me."

"Oh man," Marshall said, looking back and forth between them again. "Oh man, _ohmanohmanohman_."

"I know," Janet said. "How do we fix this?"

Marshall shook his head. "I don't think you guys understand. We have a bigger problem than you think." 

"We do?" Dash asked. "What's bigger than me in your girlfriend, Slick?"

Marshall didn't even get mad at that. Marshall didn't even seem to notice. Instead, he fixed them with what Janet had come to think of as his mega-serious expression. 

"I've looked everywhere," Marshall said, "and I don't know where the real Marshall is."


End file.
